Among the countless disgusting things that Donald Trump has done is to make a pact with Christofascists and evangelical Christians whereby in exchange for their support, he would reignite the culture wars against LGBT Americans. Sadly, keeping his promises to these hate merchants has been one of the few campaign promises Trump has kept. The sudden diktat this week that transgender troops are unwelcome in the U.S. military is but one example of this poisonous alliance. Another is Jeff Sessions' filing of an amicus brief in a civil lawsuit where the government is not a party to argue that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 affords no protections to LGBT citizens. Yet another cloud over LGBT Americans exists in the form of the pending bill in Congress which would grant Christian extremists the right to discriminate at will against LGBT individuals in accommodations, services and even medical treatment if they cited religious belief as the motivation for their bigoted actions. A column in U.S. News and World Reports looks at this slide back towards hate and bigotry. Here are excerpts:

It
was with a familiar sickness of heart that I watched as President Donald Trump
launched an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community and active duty service
members by tweeting that he is reinstating a transgender military service ban.You see, I've
been there. . . . . I was discharged because I am gay. I still mourn the loss
of the career I had aimed for, serving the country I love.

Sadly, Trump's
heinous and disgusting action – which could lead to the discharge of as many as
15,000 transgender Americans serving our country at this critical time – is
"don't ask, don't tell" all over again. Trump's nakedly political aim
to isolate, target and discriminate against transgender troops courageously
serving our country has, in a few hundred Twitter characters, threatened to
return us to a deeply shameful policy that weakens our military. Discharging
thousands of highly trained and talented troops just because of their gender
identity would be unconscionable.

I was just out
of college when I decided to enlist, after the tragic events of Sept. 11.
Though I was proud to honorably serve my country in the U.S. Marine Corps,
after re-enlisting for another four years, I knew I could no longer go on
pretending I wasn't gay.

I wanted to
continue to serve, but the law said I was suddenly unfit for duty, simply
because of who I am. A huge burden was lifted off of my family's shoulders when
"don't ask, don't tell" was finally repealed under President Barack
Obama, allowing my Marine husband to keep his distinguished career. He's now
serving a year-long deployment in one of the world's most dangerous areas.

All of our brave
troops – including my husband, who is currently serving in harm's way – are
counting on us to have their backs, no matter their gender identity or sexual
orientation.

Instead, since
the day he set foot in the White House, Trump and Vice President Mike Pence
have appointed anti-LGBTQ extremists across the government and sought to roll
back our rights at every turn. It's bad enough that Trump and Pence oppose
marriage equality, that they endorse license to discriminate laws, that they
defend anti-LGBTQ measures like North Carolina's HB2, that they appoint
anti-equality justices and that they campaign with anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

It is a new low
to target thousands upon thousands of actively serving transgender members of
the U.S. military, and impugn the honor of tens of thousands more who have
served with valor and distinction — including more than 134,000 transgender
veterans who are alive today. This attack undermines military readiness and
harms the military's ability to recruit and retain the best and the brightest,
regardless of their gender identity.

We
enlist and commission to protect our most fundamental values: freedom, justice,
equality under the law. It is an outrageous tragedy that our commander in chief
has decreed transgender troops – who are fighting for those ideals we all share
– should be treated so shamefully.

Trump and Pence are hardly the only anti-LGBT Republicans in Washington. In the northern portions of Hampton Roads Congressman Rob Wittman - a man who the best I can tell never served in the military himself - is supporting the ban on the pretext that the military needs to save money (this is a portion of a statement I secured from Wittman's extremely nasty press person):

Rep.
Wittman voted in support of an amendment offered by Rep. Vicky Hartzler of
Missouri that would have prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars for gender
reassignment surgery and hormone therapy for members of the U.S. military. Mr.
Wittman's belief is that the job of the U.S military is to fight and win our
nation’s wars but that the current, ill-conceived, transgender policy will most
likely lead to increased costs, decreased readiness, and decreased lethality.

Naturally, Wittman has no problem with the fact that the military spends ten times as much money on Viagra prescriptions than it does for transgender health service. And, of course, he has no problem with the millions wasted every weekend when Trump travels to Florida or one of his golf resorts at taxpayer expense. Hmm . . . why do I think of the word hypocrite?

Long before his ignominious firing by Der Trumpenführer, Reince Priebus had come to embody for me the extremist cancer and moral bankruptcy that has metastasized in the Republican Party. While RNC chairman, Priebus demonstrated that no lie and no amount of dissembling was too foul to pass from his lips. The man would do and say anything to further his own interests and the malignant agenda of today's GOP. When he accepted the chief of staff position in Der Trumpenführer, he signaled that his moral bankruptcy was complete. He was only too willing to lie for and prostitute himself to a vulgar, malignant narcissist utterly unfit for the office of the presidency. Thus, Priebus deserves not one shred of sympathy. When you get in bed with someone utterly toxic and and amoral, you deserve what you get. A piece in Politico looks at Priebus's fall while one in the New Yorker looks at what may lie ahead with the arrival of Trump's "mini me," Anthony
Scaramucci, at the West Wing. First these highlights from Politico:

Reince Priebus
spent his last day as White House chief of staff like nothing was out of the
ordinary. . . . By 4:49 p.m., it was over. “I am pleased to inform you that I
have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff,”
Trump tweeted from the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, where Priebus still
sat waiting in a black SUV.Other aides riding with him hopped into a different
car once the tweet posted. His SUV separated from the motorcade and went on a
rainy ride through Washington alone.

Priebus, in an
interview on CNN Friday evening, tried to downplay his tensions with Trump,
while saying it was his decision to resign.

It was an
ignominious close to an operatic six months during which Priebus was sidelined
from the outset, first by chief strategist Steve Bannon, then by Trump’s
children and finally by Anthony Scaramucci, whose arrival last week as
communications director heralded the imminent end of Priebus’ tenure.

But finally it
was the absence of progress on Trump’s legislative agenda—health care, taxes,
infrastructure—that prompted the president, in consultation with his family, to
finally tell people around him it was time “to try a different approach,” said
one senior administration official.

“It’s
hard to overstate how much the family had to do with this,” this person added.After
Scaramucci shredded Priebus in a vulgar rant to the New Yorker,
published Thursday just as the health care debate was coming to its fruitless
end, Priebus expressed his frustrations inside the White House. But the
president took Scaramucci’s side—and Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee
Sanders, went on television to excuse the comments.

As for what Scaramucci's arrival may foretell (none of it good), here are excerpts from the New Yorker:

The Mooch is a
man in a hurry. But while he looks to most like someone racing into a wall, he
is, to his patron, doing precisely what is required.

Within moments of arrival, Scaramucci was declaring his everlasting
fealty to the President (“I love the President”), erasing the
digital evidence of his previous contempt for the President (“an inherited
money dude from Queens County”), and comparing his relationship with Reince
Priebus, the White House chief of staff, to that of Cain and Abel, the killer
and the killed. And then, the other night, he called Ryan Lizza,
of The New Yorker. First, Scaramucci tried in vain to
unearth the source who revealed that he had dined at the White House, and
wrongly presumed it was Priebus. He then went on an obscene tirade about
Priebus’s mental stability, Steve Bannon’s dorsal flexibility, and, most
alarming of all, his intention to “fucking kill all the leakers” by employing
the capacities, human and technological, of the Department of Justice and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The reaction to
all this was predictable. It roiled, yet again, the sense of vertigo that has
accompanied the Trump era. And there were laughs all around, can-you-top-this
jokes on Twitter, gleeful one-liners on late-night television, grave
pronouncements on the morning shows. And yet the reaction that matters most was
that of Scaramucci’s patron, the President of the United States. Mike Allen,
the co-founder of the Web site Axios, wrote, “We’re told the President loved
the Mooch quotes.”

Of course he did. After all, Scaramucci was, in language and
in manner, channelling Trump himself. What about Scaramucci’s rant could
possibly have offended Trump’s sense of propriety, dignity, or politics? As so
many audiotapes, tweets, interviews, and speeches have made clear, Trump has no
compunction about treating people, even his most self-abnegating loyalists, as
vassals; he speaks in the language of obscenity and contempt.

Scaramucci, who
was endorsed by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, seems
to have been installed to carry out Trump’s form of personnel management—to
help demean and get rid of retainers who have proved disappointing or
threatening to his interests. Sean Spicer. Reince
Priebus. Steve Bannon. Jeff Sessions. And,
ultimately, Robert Mueller.

In other words, the Mooch matters because the Mooch helps to
clarify what matters most to the President and his family. What matters most is
Trump’s grip on his base voters and his survival in office. Everything else—a
sane health-care policy, the dignity of the transgender people who have
volunteered to serve their country, a rational environmental policy,
a foreign policy that serves basic democratic values, rule of law—is of
tertiary interest.

Trump’s focus is
not impossible to divine. He is increasingly anxious that Mueller and congressional
investigators are exploring the details of his business transactions and
financial holdings, and how they might have exposed him to being targeted by
the Russian government.

In the meantime, Trump’s capacity to demean and diminish
everyone in his proximity continues apace.

Scaramucci
matters because he has divined what Donald Trump wants, and he is speaking in
his language. Last night, John McCain and many others
refused to be cowed or intimidated. They acted in favor of the most elemental
notion of rationality and principle. Who else will follow?

Yes, we continue to see Der Trumpenführer preening and seeking to satiate his narcissism and making efforts to threaten and intimidate anyone who crosses him, but as a column in New York Magazine argues, what truly motivates Trump now comes down to one thing: stopping the Russiagate investigations and the possible treason and criminal conduct that they likely to reveal. Hence his incessant attacks on Jeff Sessions and the news media. No one acts this desperate unless there are very serious matters that must remain hidden. Donald Trump, Jr.'s, emails are likely the tip of the iceberg and with Vladimir Putin furious over the new sanctions against Russia coming from Congress with a veto proof vote, one has to wonder when Putin will decide to throw Trump to the wolves since other than causing chaos and destabilizing America, he's proving to have been a poor investment for Putin. Here are excerpts that look at Trump's now consuming obsession:

At this juncture the priorities of Donald Trump have winnowed down to
a single agenda item: saving himself and his family from legal culpability for
their campaign interactions with the Russians and their efforts to cover up
those transactions ever since. Almost everything this president does must be
viewed through this single lens. If you do so, you’ll find his actions usually
make sense.

This overriding motive explains both this week’s
orchestrated staff turmoil in the White House and the simultaneous assaults on
the civil rights of transgender American troops
and all LBGTQ employees in the private
workplace. The primary purpose of all of it is to distract from investigations
into potential Trump-family criminality and to galvanize a base that Trump
believes will protect him against the rule of law. If you have already
forgotten Jared Kushner’s loophole-strewn profession of innocence
from Monday, that’s the point.

It would seem particularly counterintuitive for Trump to go
after the like-minded Sessions, who was not only the first sitting senator to endorse his campaign
but whose Department of Justice has just filed the court papers seeking to
cripple federal civil-rights law to roll back protections for employees based
on sexual orientation. Sessions also shares Trump’s xenophobic opposition to
immigration and his antediluvian approach to criminal justice. What’s more,
Session’s political allies are Trump’s allies — from conservative Republican
senators like Richard Shelby and Orrin Hatch to media
cheerleaders like Breitbart and Tucker Carlson. But all of that is negated by
Trump’s sole priority of derailing the Russian investigation.

Trump assumed that Sessions would fix the
investigation on his behalf, much as he expected corruptible local
officials to fix his legal violations as a real-estate developer, and was
appalled that Sessions’s recusal made that impossible. If Sessions survives, it
will be only because Trump finds an easier way to achieve his No. 1 goal, the
firing of Robert Mueller. That’s bound to happen no matter who stands in the
way.

Trump is a diva who doesn’t like anyone else to share his spotlight,
and Scaramucci is a drama queen who seems
determined to pull focus from his boss at any opportunity. He just can’t help
himself. . . . His inevitable sadomasochistic humiliation at the hands of the man he “loves” will be nothing if not
entertaining to watch.

Meanwhile, the departures and purges, this White House’s Nights of the Short Knives,
will continue. The secretaries of Defense and State, Jim Mattis and Rex
Tillerson, often considered the adults in the cabinet, are now castrated,
serving as at best bystanders to major policy decisions. (Mattis, typically,
was given only one day’s notice about the transgender troop ban.) The only
Trump appointees whose jobs are safe are Ivanka and Jared. Trump is in the
bunker now.

The
president no doubt feels that he could pull out a gun and shoot his attorney general on Fifth Avenue,
and his base would still remain loyal. I have no doubt he’s correct: This is
the same quarter of the populace that believes it makes sense to endanger
themselves by replacing Obamacare with a wish and a prayer — the same
crowd that believes transgender patriots serving their country in uniform, not
Russians who hacked our election, are a clear and present danger to American
security.

The
Democrats will inevitably rebound after Trump’s implosion as they did after Richard
Nixon’s, but, as was the case in the short-lived Jimmy Carter interregnum of
the 1970s, the party’s comeback will prove short-lived if there is not a blood
transfusion of new leaders and genuinely “bold” ideas.

Out of all the Republicans in the United States Senate, only three had the decency and morality to vote "no" to Mitch McConnell's "skinny bill" that would have cause 16 million Americans to lose health insurance coverage according to the calculations of the Congressional Budget Office. Thankfully, three Republican Senators was enough to kill this abortion of a bill hypocritically pushed by the political party that claims it is "pro-life." Pro-life now meaning opposition to abortion but a willingness to harm millions, including children and the elderly. Once one passes from the womb, you are trash to be callously kicked to the curb unless, of course, one is lucky enough to be born to wealth. The moral bankruptcy of the Republican Party is near complete. Ironically, it took two women, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski - the latter of whom was threatened by Der Trumpenführer - and John McCain who is suffering from a life threatening battle with cancer - to stop the effort to harm millions so that the wealthy could reap a huge tax cut. A column by conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin looks at what happened. Here are highlights:

We’ve said it
before, but the Senate has reached a new low point in a once revered body. .
. . . To the rescue, however, rode two brave women and a war hero stricken with
cancer.

Since the healthcare debate got underway, the Republican-controlled Senate
has had a fundamental problem: It had no bill it could pass. We’re not talking
about meeting the 60-vote threshold; they had not been able find 50 votes (plus Vice President Mike Pence’s
tiebreaker) for any version of repeal and replace. So they hit upon the
idea of passing an atrocious bill that would repeal the individual mandate,
dumps 15 million people off healthcare insurance and raises premiums 20
percent. Then the kicker, as The Post reported Thursday:

In
other words, millions more people wouldn’t have insurance, and it’d be more
expensive for everybody else. It’s no wonder, then, that even the Republicans
who are voting for this bill don’t want it to become law. Sen. Lindsey O.
Graham (R-S.C.) called it a “disaster” and a “fraud.”

Three
senators actually held a press conference to say they’d vote for it — but only
if they got an ironclad guarantee the House wouldn’t pass it. That’s right:
They would only pass something they hate in order to kick the can down the
road, with no prospect they can find a bill satisfactory to enough Senate
Republicans. Really, gentleman, that’s your idea of responsible governance?

[A]
final (we think) vote on the skinny repeal took place in the wee hours of the
night on Friday. . . . In the end, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — in a
sort of Hollywood ending — voted no along with Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
and Susan Collins (R-Maine). The bill died, and with it perhaps, finally, the
quixotic vote to end Obamacare.

And what was the excuse for the rest of the Senate? They all had the power
to stop a bill many openly trashed as a joke and conceded would do great
damage. Nevertheless, all hoped someone else would do the dirty work of
derailing it. I’m hard-pressed to think of another instance in which virtually
all senators of one party (save three) declared their inability to make a
critically important decision.

It
took three brave souls, one in the twilight of his career, to finally put their
constituents and the country above partisan hackery.

How any one moral can still call them self a Republican is baffling to me. How much more depraved and hate-filled must the GOP become before they will open their eyes and face the fact that the GOP all of us once knew is dead and gone. The election of Der Trumpenführer was its death knell.

Driving from work this evening I was tuned in to satellite radio listening to a show co-hosted by former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele. The guest was a columnist from National Review who summed up the Trump White House's never ending chaos in this way: When you elect a reality TV personality - he did not call Trump a "star" - to be president, expect a the White House to become a reality show akin to the Bachelor, Survivor, and other sleazy reality shows where logic, reason and circumspection are unknown concepts. Sadly, not a day goes by when there isn't coverage of some new Trump outrage or actions evidencing that Trump doesn't grasp - or perhaps cannot grasp due to his malignant narcissism - that running the White House is not like running a real estate business that consistently skirted the law and engaged with all sorts of shady, if not criminal, elements. A column in the Washington Post predicts that the worse may be yet to come:

The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is
an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and
it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive.

I wish that were hyperbole. The problem is not
just that President Trump is selfish, insecure, egotistical, ignorant and
unserious. It is that he neither fully grasps nor minimally respects the
concept of honor, without which our governing system falls apart. He believes
“honorable” means “obsequious in the service of Trump.” He believes everyone
else’s motives are as base as his.

The Trump administration is, indeed, like the
court of some accidental monarch who is tragically unsuited for the duties of
his throne. However long it persists, we must never allow ourselves to think of
the Trump White House as anything but aberrant. We must fight for the norms of
American governance lest we forget them in their absence.

It gets worse and worse. The past week has marked a
succession of new lows.

Trump has started a sustained campaign to goad
or humiliate Attorney General Jeff Sessions into resigning. Trump has blasted
Sessions on Twitter, at a news conference, in newspaper interviews and at a campaign-style rally. He
has called Sessions “beleaguered”
and said repeatedly how “disappointed” he is in the attorney general.[W]hat kind of leader treats a lieutenant with such
passive-aggressive obnoxiousness? Trump is too namby-pamby to look Sessions in
the eye and say, “You’re fired.”

That’s what the president clearly is trying to summon the
courage to do, however. The Post reported that Trump has been
“musing” with his courtiers about the possibility of firing Sessions and naming
a replacement during the August congressional recess.

Trump has no respect for the rule of law. He
is enraged that Sessions recused himself from the investigation of Russia’s
meddling in the election, and thus is not in a position to protect the House of
Trump from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

Trump seeks to govern by whim and fiat. On Wednesday morning, he
used Twitter to announce a ban on transgender people serving in the military,
surprising his own top military leaders. . . . . Would the
thousands of transgender individuals now serving in the military be purged? Was
this actual policy or just a fit of indigestion?

Inside the mad king’s court, the internecine battles are
becoming ever more brutal. Members of Trump’s inner circle seek his favor by
leaking negative information about their rivals. This administration is more
hostile to the media than any in recent memory but is also more eager to
whisper juicy dirt about the ambitious courtier down the hall.

Trump’s new favorite, Anthony Scaramucci,
struts around more like a chief of staff than a communications director, which
is his nominal role.

Why bring in Scaramucci? Because, I fear, the mad king is
girding for war. Trump is reckless enough to fire Mueller if he digs too deeply
into the business dealings of the Trump Organization and the Kushner Companies.

What then? Will Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.) draft and push through a new special-prosecutor statute so
that Mueller can quickly be reappointed? Will House Speaker Paul D. Ryan
(R-Wis.) immediately open debate on articles of impeachment? Will we, the
people, defend our democracy?

Do not become numb to the mad king’s outrages. The worst is yet
to come.

While many are news outlets are reporting that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, tweeted ban against transgender Americans serving in the military "came out of the blue," the reality is that the supposed ban was part of Trump's effort to (i) deliver on promises made to evangelical Christian and hate group leaders in June, 2016, and (ii) change the topic from the Russiagate investigations that seem to be turning out more and more potentially damaging information on Trump and his sycophants. CNN is now reporting that Trump's action was anything but "out of the blue" and that conservative members of Congress have been lobbying long and hard for the transgender ban (and I suspect, the Justice Department filing arguing that the Civil Rights Act of 1064 affords no protections to LGBT Americans). My main complaint with the CNN piece is that it refers to those who lobbied for Trump's action as "conservatives." These people members of Congress and their masters are not conservatives. The correct labels for them include theocrats, Christofascists, Christian Taliban, hate merchants, and religious extremists, among others. Locally, Congressman Rob Wittman seems to be clicking his heels and saluting Trump on this issue. I have sought to secure an official comment from Wittman's office but have been rebuffed so far. Here are highlights from CNN's coverage:

Republicans on Capitol Hill are
scrambling to respond to President Donald Trump's announcement Wednesday to
reinstitute a ban on transgender people serving in the military after
conservatives who lobbied the White House say they were pushing only to prevent
the Pentagon from paying for medical costs associated with gender confirmation
-- not an outright ban.

Trump's decision, announced
Wednesday on Twitter and sparking bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill, comes
after the White House was lobbied by conservatives on the issue, including Rep.
Vicky Hartzler, who proposed an amendment on the defense authorization bill to
ban the Pentagon from paying what Hartzler called "transition
surgeries," as well as hormone therapy. The Missouri Republican lobbied
the White House in recent weeks to do something on the issue, a GOP
congressional aide familiar with the situation told CNN.House Republican leaders knew the
White House was already looking to change policy related to transgender people,
but only as it relates to how or whether taxpayer money is being used for
medical treatments, two Republican leadership sources told CNN.Trump's announcement on a total ban
of transgender people serving in the US military was "far beyond leaders'
expectations and caught many by surprise," one of those sources told CNN.Hartzler
tried to engage with Defense Secretary James Mattis on service members'
gender-related medical costs before the House took up the defense authorization
bill, the aide said. When her amendment to that bill failed, she went to the
White House to "address the issue" before the security spending bill
was brought to the floor, a GOP congressional aide familiar with the situation
told CNN.

News
of conservatives lobbying Trump on transgender issues was first reported by
Politico. . . . The House defeated Hartzler's amendment 209-214 on the defense
authorization bill earlier this month, with 24 Republicans joining with
Democrats to defeat the measure.

Some conservatives, such as Rep.
Mark Meadows and others in the Freedom Caucus, had been threatening to try to
kill the spending package if the transgender health provision was not included,
but Republican leadership was confident they had the votes to get the bill over
the finish line, according to congressional aides.House conservatives were trying to
avoid a roll-call vote, too, pushing leadership to add the amendment banning
medical expenses for trans service members as a "self-executing"
provision to the House Rule for the security bill, which would have avoided a
specific vote, according to a senior GOP aide. But leadership rejected that
idea.House armed services committee
Chairman Mac Thornberry told CNN Trump's decision appeared to catch the
Pentagon by surprise, too, in addition to Congress.

"It was a complete surprise,
not only to us but to the Pentagon apparently," Thornberry said.

As a history major I've often wondered what people living during times when dictators came to power and democratic norms must have felt. Examples of such times include the the fall of the Roman Republic and, of course, the rise of Adolph Hitler. Now, it seems, I know some of their distress and fear for the future as I watch a presidency out of control, normal political behavior throw in the trash, and the Republican controlled Congress acting much as the Roman Senate did as Augustus Caesar made himself the first Roman emperor. The main difference is that Augustus was a man of intelligence who sought to stabilize the empire and outwardly followed the practices of the Republic. With Trump, we are witnessing a man devoid of morality and driven only by self interest and the apparent need to cover up his own criminality. A column in the Washington Post looks at the destruction of the rule of law taking place before our very eyes. Here are excerpts:

On both ends of
Pennsylvania Avenue, we are witnessing a collapse of the norms of governing,
constant violations of our legitimate expectations of political leaders, and
the mutation of the normal conflicts of democracy into a form of warfare that
demands the opposition’s unconditional surrender.

Trump’s latest perverse miracle is that he has progressives — along with
everyone else who cares about the rule of law — rooting for Sessions. The
attorney general is as wrong as ever on voter suppression, civil rights
enforcement and immigration. But Sessions did one very important thing: He
obeyed the law.

When
it was clear that he would have obvious conflicts of interest in the
investigation of Russian meddling in our election and its possible links to the
Trump campaign, Sessions recused himself, as he was required to do.

Trump’s attacks
on Sessions for that recusal are thus a naked admission that he wants the
nation’s top lawyer to act illegally if that’s what it takes to protect the
president and his family. Equally inappropriate are Trump’s diktats from the
Oval Office calling on Sessions to investigate Hillary Clinton and those
terrible “leakers” who are more properly seen as whistleblowers against
Trump’s abuses.

Our country is now as close to crossing the line from democracy to
autocracy as it has been in our lifetimes. Trump’s ignorant, self-involved
contempt for his duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution
to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” ought to inspire patriots
of every ideological disposition to a robust and fearless defiance.

But where are the leaders of the Republican Party in the face of the
dangers Trump poses? They’re trying to sneak through a health-care bill by
violating every reasonable standard citizens should impose on public servants
dealing with legislation that affects more than one-sixth of our economy.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan have
little time for worrying about the Constitution because they are busy doing
Trump’s bidding on health care.

Let it be said
that two Republican senators will forever deserve . . . . In voting
upfront to try to stop the process, Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski
demonstrated a moral and political toughness that eluded other GOP colleagues
who had expressed doubts about this charade but fell into line behind their
leaders.

The most insidious aspect of McConnell’s strategy is that he is shooting
to pass something, anything, that would continue to save Republicans from
having a transparent give-and-take on measures that could ultimately strip
health insurance from 20 million Americans or more. Passing even the most
meager of health bills this week would move the covert coverage-demolition
effort to a conference committee with the House.

The Senate’s unseemly marathon thus seems likely to end with a push for a “skinny repeal” bill that would eliminate the
Affordable Care Act’s individual and employer mandates and its medical device
tax. But no one should be deluded: A vote for skinny repeal is a vote for an
emaciated democracy.

But McCain could yet advance the vision of the
Senate he outlined in his floor speech and rebuke “the bombastic loudmouths” he
condemned by casting a “no” vote at the crucial moment. Here’s hoping this war
hero will ultimately choose to strike a blow against everything he said is
wrong with Congress.

And when it comes to the ongoing indifference to the law in the White
House, Republicans can no longer dodge their responsibility to speak out
against what Trump is doing. They should also examine their own behavior. The
decline of our small-r republican institutions can be stopped only if the party
brandishing that adjective starts living up to the obligations its name honors.

I for one am not optimistic about the future. Once again I find myself wonder whether the husband and I should emigrate - like many Germans did in the 1930's under Hitler's growing menace - before the bottom falls out. The main concern if we take that course is how to get my children and their families out while there is still time to do so. I have no faith that Republicans will do their sworn duty and uphold the U.S. Constitution while there is still time to do so. Be very afraid.

While Der Trumpenführer's diktat against transgender members of the military is receiving the most media attention, another sinister effort is being pushed by Trump's Department of Justice that would declare that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not afford any protections to LGBT individuals targeted for discrimination. Specifically, Attorney General Jeff Sessions - a man with a long history of both racism and anti-LGBT animus - filed an amicus brief filed in Zarda v. Altitude Express, Inc., pending in the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The case involves an employee, Donald Zarda, a skydiving
instructor, who filed suit against his employer in federal court in New York,
alleging that the company terminated him for his sexual orientation in violation of
Title VII. The Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") supported Zarda last month in its own court
filing. BuzzFeed looks at the case and Trump/Sessions' effort to leave LGBT with no non-discrimination protections (something that would thrill Christofascists and evangelical Christians). Here are highlights:

The U.S. Justice
Department on Wednesday argued in a major federal lawsuit that a 1964 civil
rights law doesn’t protect gay workers from discrimination, thereby diverging
from a separate, autonomous federal agency that had supported the gay
plaintiff’s case.

The Trump
administration’s filing is unusual in part because the Justice Department isn’t
a party in the case, and the department doesn’t typically weigh in on private
employment lawsuits.

But in an amicus
brief filed at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, lawyers under
Attorney General Jeff Sessions contend that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
of 1964, which bans sex discrimination, does not cover sexual orientation.

The Justice
Department also contends that Title VII only applies if men and women are
treated unequally.

"The
essential element of sex discrimination under Title VII is that employees of
one sex must be treated worse than similarly situated employees of the other
sex, and sexual orientation discrimination simply does not have that
effect," the brief says.

After a lower
court ruled and the case was appealed, the 2nd Circuit invited outside parties
to weigh in. Zarda v. Altitude Express is now before before a full panel of
judges at the court.

Among Zarda’s
boosters is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a largely autonomous
federal agency that handles civil rights disputes in the workplace, which supported Zarda last month in its own court
filing.

For several
years, the EEOC has declared in federal court that Title VII bans anti-gay
discrimination, saying it is based on sex stereotyping, and therefor
discrimination on the basis of sex.

If Zarda’s
argument were to prevail — despite his death in base-jumping accident in 2014 —
it would set new precedent in the circuit by overturning two cases from the
2000s.

Further, it
would give momentum to the argument as a general matter, given that the 7th
Circuit ruled in favor of lesbian in April who made
the same claim.

Earlier on
Wednesday, Trump announced he would end all transgender
military service.

“On the day that
will go down in history as Anti-LGBT Day, comes one more gratuitous and
extraordinary attack on LGBT people’s civil rights," said a statement from
James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT & HIV
Project. "The Sessions-led Justice Department and the Trump administration
are actively working to expose people to discrimination."

Let it not be forgotten that every friend, family member or neighbor of an LGBT American voted for this attack on our basic civil rights when they voted for Donald Trump. Do NOT give them a pass or forgive them for the harm that they set in motion and will be continuing to support as long as they continue to support Trump and the GOP more generally. With "friends" like these Trump supporters, one doesn't need an enemy.

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Donald Trump made many promises during the 2016 presidential campaign. So far, other than putting anti-gay Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, Trump has delivered on few of his promises. At least the publicly made ones. Time will tell what promises he may have made to Vladimir Putin, but today we witnessed Trump delivering on one of his promises to Christofascist leaders in June, 2016. Today, Trump issued a fiat ban on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military - much to the near orgasmic joy of hate group leaders such as Tony Perkins. Pleasing the evangelical Christians who bear responsibility for Trump's presidency is far more important than delivering jobs to those in Youngstown, Ohio, or western Pennsylvania who he played for fools. So too is causing distractions to divert media attention from the increasingly serious Russiagate scandal. A piece in The New Yorker looks at Trump's cruel and cynical action against one of the most beleaguered segments of society. Here are excerpts:

Nearly a half
century ago, young Donald Trump—a Wharton graduate, and an avid player of
squash, football, and tennis—scored a 1-Y medical deferment. Hundreds of
thousands of young men were being deployed to Vietnam. Trump had some bone
spurs. He then limped happily into his father’s real-estate business without
delay.

When Trump was interviewed by the Times
about his deferment during the 2016 campaign, he admitted
that the foot condition was “temporary” and “minor”—usually orthotics or
stretching eased the pain—and yet, “I had a doctor that gave me a letter—a very
strong letter on the heels.” He promised the paper that he would look for the
letter. Amazingly, it never turned up.

On Wednesday morning,
the Commander-in-Chief declared by tweet-fiat that, “after consultation with my
Generals and military experts,” he had decided to reverse an Obama
Administration decision and bar transgender individuals from serving in the
military “in any capacity.” Trump tweeted further, “Our military must be
focused on decisive and overwhelming . . . victory and cannot be burdened with
the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military
would entail.”

Let’s begin with the retrograde cruelty. There are thousands
of transgender people already serving among the 1.3 million active-duty members
of the military. These are people who have volunteered their service and have
potentially put their lives on the line, and yet their President, who managed
to come up with a flimsy doctor’s note back in the day, denies them their
dignity, their equality. He will not “accept or allow” them in the military.
Imagine the scale of this insult.

However, today’s
outrage—they seem to come at least once daily—is not merely one that reflects
on Trump’s low character. It also reveals yet another layer of his political
cynicism, and his willingness to use any tactical means available to try to
emerge whole from his current predicament.

The President is in the midst of a colossal scandal, and the
country, to an increasing measure, knows it. It’s not merely a matter of poor
popularity polls. A sizable portion of the country wants to be rid of him and
suspects he is unworthy of his office. Six months into his Presidency,
according to a USA Today/Media Ethics poll, the
country is split on whether or not he should be impeached . . . . The scandal
is broad-based, but it surely includes (but is not limited to) contacts with
Russian officials during the campaign and potential collusion . . . . the
accumulating evidence of a history of sleazy business practices and partners;
and the level of sheer incompetence in the West Wing.

It is implausible that Trump paid much attention to his
highest-ranking generals, or to experts, generally; Secretary of Defense James Mattis has
supported transgender individuals joining the military. And the hardly radical Rand
Corporation has published an in-depth study refuting the idea that
transgender soldiers are somehow expensive, or that they undermine the morale
and cohesion of the military over all. Trump’s decision to bar transgender
people from the military is pure politics, cheap and cruel politics, a naked
attempt to divert attention from his woes, to hold on to support from his base
. . . . In other words, it is a decision straight out of the Steve Bannon
playbook. Cue the organs of the alt-right press.

When you begin
to consider the meanness of what Trump has done, it is worth remembering him
saying that he was “smarter” than the generals on military matters, and that he
mocked John McCain’s service in Vietnam because “I like people who weren’t
captured.” When you begin to think about the scale of this offense, it is worth
remembering Khizr Khan, the Gold
Star father who lost a son in Iraq, addressing Trump directly from the lectern
of the Democratic National Convention: “You have sacrificed nothing and no
one.”

The latest tactic of anti-LGBT hate groups is to lie - lying is one of their hallmarks - and claim that they are being persecuted and slandered because of their religious beliefs. The tactic is part of the organized effort to create the myth in America that Christians are facing persecution and, therefore, need to have "religious freedom" laws enacted in their favor. As noted numerous times, these laws are in fact a license to discriminate and simply allow Christofascists to exempt themselves from non-discrimination laws and ordinances. They undermine the rule of law and establish a de facto national religion in the form of extremist Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has a piece that looks at what these hate groups all have in common: spreading know lies and untruths and working endlessly to subject LGBT citizens to discrimination and, sometimes, criminalization. It is a part of the Christofascists effort to destroy anything and anyone who does not comport with their fear and based beliefs and/or might make others question such beliefs. Here are highlights from the piece which shows the deliberate dishonesty and viciousness of Alliance Defending Freedom (the same agenda applies to Family Research Council and a host of "family values" groups):

In
2016, The Southern Poverty Law Center added the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF; formerly
Alliance Defense Fund until 2012) to its list of anti-LGBT hate groups.

The designation
is a result of ADF’s propagation of known falsehoods about LGBT people over the
years (including the conspiracy theory that there is a “homosexual agenda” or
“homosexual legal agenda” to undermine “the family” and Christianity), its
demonization of LGBT people, its support of criminalization of gay sex in the
U.S. and abroad and its continued attempts to create state and local policies
and legislation (so-called “religious liberty” laws) that allow Christians to
deny goods and services to LGBT people in the public sphere and marginalize
LGBT students in schools.

The SPLC does
not name groups to its anti-LGBT hate list simply for having biblical
objections to homosexuality or for opposing same-sex marriage.

Founded
by some 30 leaders of the Christian Right, the Alliance Defending Freedom is a
legal advocacy and training group that specializes in supporting the recriminalization
of homosexuality abroad, ending same-sex marriage, and generally making life as
difficult as possible for LGBT communities in the U.S. and internationally. . .
. . Since its founding, the ADF has expanded its operations abroad as it
battles abortion, LGBT equality, and what it considers the “myth” of the
separation of church and state.

The
ADF’s longstanding antipathy toward LGBT people has become public through its
work on lawsuits, various statements it has made, and materials it has offered
on its website over the years. It has also promoted the idea of a “homosexual agenda” — a nefarious
scheme to destroy Christianity and, eventually, civilization through LGBT
people’s efforts to secure equality under the law. To those who believe in this
conspiracy theory, LGBT people are not really seeking equality; rather, they
are actually seeking to destroy such things as Christianity, the family and
culture.

ADF Senior
Counsel Erik Stanley at the Gospel, Homosexuality, and the Future of Marriage
conference, 2014: “Alliance Defending
Freedom seeks to recover the robust Christendomic theology of the 3rd, 4th, and
5th centuries.

Alan
Sears, then-president of ADF (he was president until January, 2017) publishes a
book he co-wrote with then-ADF colleague Craig Osten titled The Homosexual
Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today, which
was heavily advertised for sale on the ADF website and offered in fundraising
pitches for years. The book is the authors’ attempt to describe how far the
conspiracy of “the homosexual agenda” has infiltrated the country and
undermined Christianity through things like media and educational institutions.
Sears and Osten described the media campaign conducted by LGBT
activists in the 70s and 80s (as summarized in the account After The Ball:
How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90s) to "a
war of propaganda, just as Hitler did so masterfully in
Nazi Germany."

Sears
and Osten also claim that homosexual activists are attempting to “indoctrinate
children” as early as kindergarten. (p. 52) The authors link homosexuality
to pedophilia . . . .

Lawrence v. Texas
amicus briefs . . . ADF files two friend-of-the-court briefs in the
landmark Lawrence v. Texas case, which struck down anti-LGBT sodomy
laws in the United States. Both briefs support retaining criminalization.
One, with ADF attorney Glen Lavy, is a
litany of graphic descriptions of sex acts and how dangerous same-sex
sexual activity is (more so than opposite-sex sodomy, the brief argues),
ultimately claiming that the state (Texas) should continue to criminalize
same-sex sexual acts in the interest of public health and “morality.”

A
pamphlet titled “The Truth about Homosexual Marriage” —
available on the ADF’s website — claims that same-sex marriage, civil unions and
domestic partnerships are dangerous to children. . . . . The pamphlet promotes
ex-gay ministry Exodus (Exodus International shut down in 2013) for its role in
“helping thousands of individuals stop homosexual behavior.”

According to the ADF website, “The
homosexual legal agenda is one of the greatest threats to religious freedom in
America today.” The strategy of proponents of this agenda “is twofold: dilute
moral values so that homosexual behavior is thought to be normal, natural and
good, while suppressing the religious and free speech rights of those who
disagree.” Clearly, the ADF says, “The homosexual agenda is at odds
with religious freedom.”

Alan Sears speaks in a plenary session (PDF)
at the anti-LGBT World Congress of Families gathering in Madrid, Spain. The
session is titled “The Homosexual Agenda” and Sears states that, “the
homosexual legal agenda” reveals “an extremism that seeks out and persecutes
any soul, in any corner of our society, who refuses to publicly embrace and
aggressively promote homosexual behavior.”

ADF
attorney Piero Tozzi addresses (PDF) an
anti-LGBT conference in Jamaica, where he voices his support for the continued
imposition of the Jamaican anti-sodomy law which, he says, is a “the bulwark”
against a “larger agenda” and falsely links childhood trauma to homosexuality.

ADF attorney Erik Stanley speaks in Tennessee at a conference titled
“The Gospel, Homosexuality and the Future of Marriage” where he pushes the myth that
Matthew Shepard’s brutal murder was “fabricated” and had nothing to do with his
homosexuality. Rather, the story about his murder being a hate crime was to
advance the “homosexual legal agenda.”ADF sends a letter to school districts around
the country stating that no school is legally beholden to implement
trans-inclusive policies and allow trans students to access bathrooms and
locker rooms of the gender with which they identify. The letter denies the
gender identity of such students and claims that such inclusive policies are
allowing opposite sex students to access the facilities, which is “dangerous.”

ADF
legal counsel Douglas Wardlow testifies in an
Anoka-Hennepin school board meeting in Minnesota against allowing trans
students to access facilities in accordance with their gender identities. Prior
to his testimony, hesent a letter to the board in which he used
the discredited research of Mark Regnerus and Paul McHugh to falsely claim that
protecting trans students from discrimination is not supported by medical
science (it is).

ADF's lies are endless. Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation spreads the same untruths and amazingly to date has escaped a formal hate group designation, perhaps because its propaganda is limited to within Virginia. Both groups seek to spread anti-LGBT hatred and to give Christian extremists special rights and need to be recognized as a menace to true religious freedom.

Most American presidents are invited to the Boy Scout National Jamboree, but while many attend the event and speak, a significant do not. Would that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, had passed up the invitation. What ensued when Trump addressed the Scout gathering sounded more akin to Adolph Hitler addressing a gathering of Hitler Youth members. Rather than being uplifting and talking about good citizenship and living by the Scout Law, Der Trumpenführer attacked the mainstream news media, sought to illicit boos against Barack Obama, and made the speech into a political case of verbal diarrhea aimed at harming anyone not swearing fealty to "Dear Leader." While cheers were heard on the audio of Trump's rant, many in attendance and others with strong ties to the Boy Scouts were not happy and the supposedly non-partisan non-profit organization felt compelled to distance itself from Trump's political and personal attacks. Coverage in the Washington Post looks at this vile and inappropriate screed by a man who sounded more like a peevish child that the president of a global super power. Here are highlights:

Trump’s
speech at the Jamboree in Mount Hope, W.Va., broke with years of tradition —
presidential traditions and Scouting traditions both. Past presidents had used
these moments to extol American exceptionalism and civic virtues — such as
service and honesty — that have long been pillars of the Boy Scout ethos.

Trump did a
little of that before veering into a speech about his own exceptionalism.“It pivoted to essentially a typical Trump rally.
And it was not a campaign-rally audience. It was an audience of young boys and
young men, who’ve come from around the country to celebrate Scouting,” said
Robert Birkby, a former Eagle Scout who wrote three editions of the Boy Scout
Handbook. “He did not share in the event. He shared of himself.”

By Tuesday,
Trump’s speech had prompted a backlash from many current and former Scouts and
their families, who say it was not only inappropriate but also undermines
efforts to diversify and modernize the century-old organization.

On social media and in interviews, many said they
thought national leaders should have cut short or condemned the speech, which
included strong language — “Who the hell wants to speak about politics when I’m
in front of the Boy Scouts?” — and a reference to cocktail parties attended by
“the hottest people in New York.” Trump at times tried to raise issues more
traditionally discussed at Boy Scout gatherings, such as character and
perseverance. But he also lingered on his campaign fight against Democrat
Hillary Clinton and seemingly joked about firing his health and human services
secretary over Republicans’ inability, so far, to pass health-care legislation.

By
midday Tuesday, the organization’s Facebook page included hundreds of comments
from former Scouts and parents of Scouts, calling for the organization to make
a stronger statement condemning the speech. Many threatened to pull out of Scouting.

The controversy
comes as the venerable organization, which has promoted civic engagement and
character development among children since 1910, strives to stay relevant and
appear inclusive. Membership in the Boy Scouts has dwindled by a third since 2000,
to just more than 2 million as of 2016.

The organization has sought to reach out to Hispanics through its Valores
para Toda la Vida (Values for Life) program. It founded its co-ed Venturing
program, which focuses on outdoor exploration for teens and young adults, in
1998 and has opened some of its other programs to girls, though so far not its
prestigious Eagle Scout program. The organization rescinded its ban on gay
members in 2014 and in January announced that it will allow transgender
members.

The efforts have
in part been an effort to keep from driving away parents and students in more
liberal areas of the country, said Alvin Townley, a Georgia-based author who
wrote “A Legacy of Honor,” a history of the Eagle Scouts, who have earned the
highest level of achievement in the organization. He suggested that the
political nature of Trump’s speech undermines that goal.

“No president has used the Jamboree as a backdrop to advance a political
agenda. . . . . And Scouting’s vitality relates directly to its inclusion
of people from different backgrounds and different perspectives.”

Trump’s remarks were the last straw for at least one former Scout. Eric
Styner, 31, who works in quality assurance at a technology company in Seattle,
said Tuesday that he had decided to renounce his status as an Eagle Scout.

Styner said he
gradually became alienated from the Scouts, beginning at age 14, when he was
rankled by the requirement that a Scout profess a belief in God to pass his
Eagle Scout Board of Review. He was further disillusioned when the Scouts held
fast to a gay ban even after many states had legalized same-sex marriage.
Trump’s speech clinched it, he said.

Some defended
the organization, saying that it did the right thing by inviting Trump. The
problem, they said, was Trump.

For the record, I was a scout as was my son. That said, I have become increasingly disillusioned with the Boy Scouts which seems to aligned with Christofascists and pushes an anti-gay, anti-minority agenda. That Trump was allowed to engage in such an inappropriate and dishonest rant makes me more resolved to make sure that my grandsons are not scouts.

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Out gay attorney in a committed relationship; formerly married and father of three wonderful children; sometime activist and political/news junkie; survived coming out in mid-life and hope to share my experiences and reflections with others.
In the career/professional realm, I am affiliated with Caplan & Associates PC where I practice in the areas of real estate, estate planning (Wills, Trusts, Advanced Medical Directives, Financial Powers of Attorney, Durable Medical Powers of Attorney); business law and commercial transactions; formation of corporations and limited liability companies and legal services to the gay, lesbian and transgender community, including birth certificate amendment.

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